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Interesting facts about snowflakes. Interesting winter facts for kids

Interesting facts about snowflakes. Interesting winter facts for kids

Snow is incredibly large figures that amaze our imagination. In order for one snowflake to crystallize from water vapor, one million water drops are needed. And in just a winter, on average, one septillion snowflakes fall on the earth. A septillion is one trillion trillion and is a number with 24 zeros after one. Now try to find out the number of water droplets by multiplying a septillion by a million ...

Snow flies and swirls because snowflakes are almost weightless. And no wonder: after all, they are only 5% water. Therefore, in calm calm weather, the speed of falling snowflakes weighing 1 milligram does not exceed 0.9 km / h. But with the mind-boggling numbers of snowflakes, this is an apparent lightness. Suffice it to say that just 1 cm of snow cover per hectare of area can produce from 25 to 35 cubic meters of water.

The whiteness of snow, sung for centuries, is a consequence of the 95% content of air in snowflakes. Light scatters from countless surfaces of ice crystals, which are snowflakes, in all directions, regardless of the wavelength of the spectrum. In general, snow plays a huge role in the thermoregulation of the Earth's climate: it reflects up to 90% of the sun's rays. It was with the onset of snowfalls and the appearance of snow-covered surfaces that the volcano warmed up earth atmosphere ancient earth began to cool to the present state. Want to know what a planet without snow looks like? Take a look at Venus...

But ideally white snow can be painted in any color, depending on which component is present in the water droplets: dust, sand, algae, etc. The chronicle of mankind, from chronicles to YouTube videos, tells about the snow of a wide variety of colors. You can imagine the horror of the Swiss when black snow fell on their heads exactly on Christmas Day 1969! Somewhere in the highlands lies pink snow, colored with algae, which feed on ice worms. And this snow smells like… watermelons!

If you have not only seen snow, but also wandered through it, you can be considered lucky: most of the world's population has never seen snow live. By the way, have you noticed that the stronger the frost, the louder the snow creaks under your feet? This creak is the crunch of breaking ice needles on snowflakes. At temperatures below -6 degrees, a high-frequency component is present in the spectrum of this crunch. What is interesting: snowflakes also emit high-frequency sounds when they simply fall into the water. This "singing" is inaudible to the human ear, but, according to scientists, fish cannot stand it.

Every person who has devoted his life to the study of snowflakes can consider that he did not live it in vain. The first was, by the way, not a scientist, but a professional photographer, American Wilson Bentley. Snowflakes interested him as a teenager. But Bentley did not have time to sketch them: the snowflakes quickly melted even at sub-zero temperatures. Fortunately, cameras had already appeared by this time. After much experimentation, the first photograph of a snowflake on black velvet was taken on January 15, 1885. During his life, Bentley took more than 5 thousand such photographs, together with the scientist Perkins, for the first time declared that no two snowflakes are the same, and deservedly received the nickname Snowflake (Snowflake).

Bentley and Perkins were right. The process of crystallization of water droplets is unpredictable, and therefore two snowflakes with the same pattern do not exist. Some physicists, deriving complex formulas, prove that the number of variants of snowflake shapes exceeds the number of atoms in the part of the Universe observed by man! Their sizes also vary. The average snowflake is no more than 5 mm in diameter. But on January 28, 1987, in Fort Coy (Montana, USA), during a snowfall, one of the heirs of the Bentley case discovered, without exaggeration, a giant 38 mm snowflake!

You ask: “Why study snowflakes? Does it make any sense?" After all, four centuries have passed since Johannes Kepler in his treatise “On Hexagonal Snowflakes” believed the wonders of nature to be rigid geometry. There is.

The theory of the crystal, which was substantially supplemented by the study of snowflakes, has many gaps. For example, scientists know about the dependence of snowflake growth on temperature, air humidity and other external conditions. But they couldn't explain it. For now.

But snowflakes as a type of solid precipitation are included in the classification of the International Commission on Snow and Ice. It turns out that snow crystals can be in the form of plates, star-shaped, simple columns, columns with a tip, needles, spatial dendrites, and even irregular shapes. The latter happens when a drop of water freezes to a falling "young" snowflake.

But in Japan, snowflakes are not only correct, but also special. That is, Japanese. Joking aside: in the Japanese islands, it is still suspected that the local snow is not the same as in other countries. What jokes are there! In the early 1980s, it came to the government restricting ski imports under the pretext of protecting the domestic manufacturer. Somewhere in Japan New Year you can still hear the song about the Japanese champion who will never be able to ride on Japanese snow on imported skis ...

Therefore, You and I are very lucky that we have the opportunity to admire the beauty of the first spring flowers and the heavy snowfalls outside the window.

Today I will tell you some interesting things about snowflakes. I'm sure you something to surprise your friends!

Do you know that a snowflake is 95% air? That is why snowflakes fall to the ground so slowly, as if spinning in a slow dance. Scientists even measured the speed of their fall - 0.9 km/h.

The fact that a snowflake has air in its structure explains it. White color. The light reflects off the ice and air crystals and scatters, which is why we see this silvery-white winter beauty.

But history knows cases when snow fell in other colors. black snowfall shocked the residents Sweden in 1969 and California in 1955 saw green snow. Blimey!

Who colors the snow in such unusual colors for us? Scientists say interesting creatures live in the snow of the Antarctic mountains snow chlamydomonas. So they make the snow pink, red, purple and even yellow.

Another interesting fact: when falling into water snowflake "sings", creating a very high pitched sound that is inaudible to the human ear. But fish He hears him perfectly, and, moreover, does not like him very much.

Have you ever wondered why it is so cold in winter? it snow reflects 90% of the light from the earth's surface without letting it warm up.

The world's largest snowflake found in USA in 1987. The diameter of the giant beauty amounted to 38 cm!

And in Moscow On April 30, 1944, the strangest snow in human history fell. Snowflakes the size of your palm circled over the city, and in shape they resembled... ostrich feathers.

In an ordinary snowfall, we do not think that an ordinary snowflake, when studied under a microscope, can be a wonderful sight and amaze us with the correctness and complexity of forms. snowfall consists of such beauty.

By the way, the snow itself is not only white. In arctic and mountainous regions, pink or even red snow is common. The fact is that the algae living between its crystals color entire areas of snow. But there are cases when snow fell from the sky already colored - blue, green, gray and black.

So, on Christmas Day 1969, black snow fell in Sweden. Most likely, this happened due to the fact that during the fall, the snow absorbed soot and industrial pollution from the atmosphere. In any case, laboratory testing of air samples revealed the presence of the insecticide DDT in the black snow.

Mathematics was especially struck by the “tiny white dot, as if it were the footprint of a compass, which was used to outline its circumference.

The great astronomer Johannes Kepler in his treatise "New Year's gift. About hexagonal snowflakes" explained the shape of crystals by the will of God. The Japanese scientist Nakaya Ukichiro called snow "a letter from heaven, written in secret hieroglyphs."

He was the first to create a classification of snowflakes. The only snowflake museum in the world, located on the island of Hokkaido, is named after Nakaya.

Complex star-shaped snowflakes have a unique, visually distinguishable geometric shape. And there are more variants of such forms, according to physicist John Nelson from Ritsumeikan University (Japanese) in Kyoto, than there are atoms in the observable Universe.

During a snowfall in 1987 in Fort Coe (Montana, USA) a snowflake was found - a world record holder with a diameter of 38 cm.

The fact that one snowflake is practically weightless, any of us knows very well: just put your palm under the falling snow.

An ordinary snowflake weighs about a milligram (very rarely 2-3 milligrams), although there are exceptions - the largest snowflakes fell on April 30, 1944 in Moscow. Caught in the palm, they covered it almost entirely and resembled ostrich feathers.

More than half of the world's population has never seen snow, except in photographs.

A layer of one centimeter of snow packed over the winter gives 25-35 cubic meters of water per 1 ha

Snowflakes are 95% air, which results in low density and relatively slow falling speed (0.9 km/h).

Snow can be eaten. True, the energy consumption for eating snow is many times greater than its calorie content.

A snowflake is one of the most fantastic examples of the self-organization of matter from simple to complex.

In the Far North, the snow is so hard that the ax, when struck, rings like it was hit on iron.

The forms of snowflakes are unusually diverse - there are more than five thousand of their variations. Even a special international classification has been developed, in which snowflakes are combined into ten classes. These are stars, plates, columns, needles, hail, tree-like crystals resembling fern stalks. The dimensions of the winter miracle range from 0.1 to 7 millimeters.

The creak of snow is just the noise from crushed crystals. Of course, the human ear cannot perceive the sound of one "broken" snowflake. But myriads of crushed crystals create quite a clear creak. Snow creaks only in frost, and the tone of the creak changes depending on the air temperature - the stronger the frost, the higher the tone of the creak. The scientists made acoustic measurements and found that there are two gentle and not sharply expressed maximums in the spectrum of snow creaking - in the range of 250-400 Hz and 1000-1600 Hz.

Snowflakes viewed under a microscope are the miraculous handiwork of God. Each crystallized raindrop - and this is snow - has a certain systematic pattern with countless varieties - several of them are shown in the figure.

In snowfall, we do not think that an ordinary snowflake under a microscope is a beautiful sight and amazes with the correctness and complexity of its shape. Snowflakes look like roses, lilies and wheels with six teeth. He was particularly struck by the “tiny white dot” he found in the middle of the snowflake, as if it were the trace of the leg of a compass, which was used to outline its circumference.

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Why are snowflakes hexagonal and snow white? And other interesting facts about snowflakes that you did not even know about. Bonus: double snowflake template.

Again winter - snowfall, cold and snowdrifts.

But do not rush to despair, everything is much more interesting!

Take a closer look at the snow, because it is not just an atmospheric phenomenon, but an amazing masterpiece of the art of nature.

1. Formed in the sky from microscopic drops of water and dust particles.

2. They are a bizarrely assembled structure of ice crystals, mainly in the form of hexagonal stars or plates.

Although there are exceptions.

3. As they approach the earth, as a result of the condensation of water from the air, they grow and acquire their own unique shape.

4. They live only in flight!

Having descended from the sky, the snowflake crystals stop growing and almost immediately begin to lose their clarity of edges.

5. Snowflakes have a hexagonal shape due to the corresponding structure of the water crystal.

6. New crystals are sequentially attached to the tops of the base crystal, thereby creating a symmetrical hexagonal structure.

7. When falling from a height, the crystals repeatedly melt and solidify again, as a result of which the ideal geometric structure is violated. But since the crystallization of all six rays takes place under the same conditions, all the rays of one snowflake are almost identical.

8. Nature has boundless imagination and inexhaustible imagination, so you will never see two identical snowflakes.

9. Depending on the surrounding conditions, elongated snowflakes (column snowflakes and needle snowflakes) or our favorite openwork hexagons are formed.

10. At extremely low temperatures (below minus thirty degrees Celsius), snow falls in the form of the so-called "diamond dust" - snow needles, which, settling on the ground, create the most fluffy snowdrifts.

11. Snowflakes are 95 percent air.

12. It is due to the presence of air, which scatters light waves, that snow is white.

13. The speed of a snowflake falling is 0.9 kilometers per hour.

14. The average size of snowflakes is 5 millimeters, and the weight is only 4 thousandths of a gram.

15. Cases of giant snowflakes with a diameter of more than 30 cm have been recorded.

16. A cubic meter of snow contains about 350,000,000 unique snowflakes.

17. Snow creaks at temperatures below minus 5 degrees. Mainly due to the breaking of the crystals. At a higher temperature, the snow does not break when squeezed, but melts - and therefore does not creak.